


Nights Before Goose

by Framlingem



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen, Orion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-23
Updated: 2010-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-12 03:47:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Framlingem/pseuds/Framlingem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaila never slept alone until she came to Earth. She doesn't know how. Written for Sholio, for the prompts "pets" and "the last night before something that will change your life" (sort of. Night turned into a plural.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights Before Goose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



When the little girl was born, she had a full head of red hair. Her mother never knew, for it was not the way for mothers to know daughters, or for daughters to know mothers. The little girl was fed, then taken into the next room and pronounced healthy, and then sent up to Genetics to determine where she should be placed, and tagged accordingly. Her first night, she slept in the crèche, surrounded by the tiny snufflings and occasional cries of other small girls, lulled by the steady breathing and voices of the women who did not have the talent for the Arts of dance, song, or pleasure.

 

***

When the little girl was old enough, she was brought before the house's Teachers. They discovered that she couldn't sing, but the way she held herself, head high, spine straight, and could place her arms... yes, there was a dancer there, under the baby fat and the short legs. "And that _hair_ ," one of them said, sadly. "Not much choice."  
"Men do love the exotic."  
The little girl was named, _Gaila_ , and a place was made for her in the women's quarters in the Palace, with the dancers. The dormitory held fifteen others, all grown, and they fussed over her as they put her to bed, then filed out. She stared at the unfamiliar shadows and laid awake, trembling, until the others came back, exhausted, two limping, and then closed her eyes and listened as they crept about the room, trying not to wake her. She fell asleep to the sound of hair being brushed and braided, to soft hisses as ointment was applied to sensitive spots, to whispered gossip, and woke in hush before the dawn.

 

***

Gaila came of age, a brilliant untouched dancer, and that night was summoned from the women's quarters to the gentlemen's suites. Her roommates curled and oiled her hair, each of them stroking her gently in turn, in quick stolen touches. _We are here_ , they said, _remember that we are here_. Gaila was not stupid, and had been given instruction in Pleasure, and when she was escorted into and left alone in the gentleman's foyer, she made her courtesies and asked what the gentleman would like. She was prepared.

She was not prepared when he spun her around, shoved her face into the wall, and hissed into her ear that he would like her to not make a sound.

Afterwards, he retreated into his soundproofed bedroom and she laid on the foyer floor, cheek cooled by the stone tiles, and listened to silence until the escords came to collect her. Back in the women's quarters, the dancers brushed her hair, and washed her face, and applied ointment as she hissed. The eldest, her teacher, crawled into bed with her, facing her, and Gaila tucked her cheek into her teacher's ribs and listened to her heartbeat and the soft gurgle of digestion. _I am here_ , it said.

***

The smuggler was an easy target, full of bluster and lust already. Gaila twitched her hips and smiled and beckoned him into his small, airless shuttle, then let her pheromones do the work, and then he was hers, mind and body. She told the guard that the Prince had ordered a private performance, and the dancers filed out, all sixteen of them, wearing their best jewelry. They had dancer's bodies, quick and deceptively strong, and nobody noticed when they overwhelmed the guard and left him, neck broken, in a linen closet.

To a woman, they knew how not to make a sound.

The smuggler's freighter, it turned out, was not large, and there was only the one cabin. The combined efforts of sixteen high-quality Orion dancers, over half of them trained in Pleasure, overwhelmed any objections the smuggler might have had. The women share the cabin, curled on the floor, leg by cheek by shoulder, arms intertwined. Their hair mixed on the floor, all black save for Gaila's red, and Gaila listened to their easy, free breathing and smiled. She'd felt no guilt at all about manipulating the smuggler. After all, she'd given him Pleasure, and she was _very_ good. It was a fair trade.

***

So here is Gaila, in a strip club near the San Francisco spaceport, dancing for the spacers and the soldiers and the groundpounding mechanics, with a giant watching over her to make sure nobody touches. She's learning English and Mandarin, and she listens hungrily to the stories told by the people in the uniforms, stories of rosy nebulas stretched like a dancer's gauze across the stars, of the spangled swiftness of warp travel, of brave deeds and noble acts. She's clever, she's always been clever, and one of the mechanics is teaching her how the machines work, and there's a science officer who teaches her mathematics whenever she's on shore leave. She's picking it up fast. She's got a lot of catching up to do, though, and it'll be a couple of years before she can take her equivalency exams for the Academy.

She's tired, though, and can't sleep well. Her room is not large, but it gapes wide and empty at night, and the architect took the spaceport into account when designing it, so it's got thick walls and triple-glazed windows, and it's so quiet. She tries music, tries something called books-on-tape that her boss recommended, but it's too regular, too patently _fake_ , and she keeps waking up when the recording ends.

A co-worker invites her over for a late supper one night after work, and they're sitting in armchairs afterwards drinking coffee when something jumps into her lap and starts making a noise. Gaila has enough control over her body not to spill her drink, but her eyes dart to where Deb is sitting.   
"Duck likes you," says Deb.  
"That is good," says Gaila. "Um. What he is? Should be making that noise?"  
"Duck's my cat. He's purring. It means he likes you. Go on, scratch his ears."

Gaila does, and when the duck does not do anything untoward, she relaxes into it. Next thing she knows, she's waking up, covered in a blanket, and Deb's making breakfast. Gaila feels awake, and it's a wonderful feeling. Deb wilts a little under Gaila's barrage of questions, but takes her shopping anyway.

A litter box, some toys, and some food later, they march into the SPCA.  
"I need a duck," Gaila announces. They stare at her, confused.  
"I'm sorry, ma'am," one of them says eventually. "We don't actually have any ducks at the moment."  
Now Gaila is confused. She points. "Are not those ducks?" Deb whispers something into her ear. "Ah. I am sorry. I would like a cat, please. Not a bird of water."

There are forms to fill out and references to check, but Gaila's got the equipment, a steady job with decent pay, and a good home, and the next day she takes home Goose, who liked her almost as immediately as Duck did. Gaila doesn't admit to Deb that male cats appear to be as affected by the pheromones as much as male humans, and anyway, she'd only used them a little.

That night, she climbs into bed, and so does Goose. He pads about in circles before curling into her belly, enjoying the heat. Every so often he jumps down off the bed to explore and make sure the room is still the way it was when he checked last, and Gaila sleeps on, comforted by his breathing and tiny scratchings and felted footsteps.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for the lateness. Hurricane Igor made finding someplace to upload this a bit iffy.


End file.
